![](https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/10/Pete-Tweet.png/")
Optimizely was acquired</a>, Pete and his team had climbed up to nearly $120M in ARR. </p><p>(Fun fact: Pete is also a<em> literal </em>climber. Check out <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.instagram.com/p/BqJPCM8gg_B//">this picture</a> of him conquering El Capitan.)</p><p>Pete first came back to YC last year as a Visiting Group Partner — a similar role, but one that asks for a commitment on a batch-to-batch basis. As with Pete, a number of Visiting Group Partners have gone on to join YC as full-time Group Partners.</p><p>On that note, <strong>I’m also very happy to welcome two more YC alumni back home as Visiting Group Partners</strong>: Tyler Bosmeny and Nate Smith.</p><p><strong>Tyler </strong>is the co-founder and former CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/clever/">Clever (S12), which lets students and teachers access all of their learning software in one place. If you have a kid in K-12 in the U.S., they probably log into Clever all the time — 60% of them do. In 2021, Clever was acquired for half a billion dollars. Besides his uniquely deep expertise in EdTech, Tyler brings a ton of experience in B2B sales (he was already leading a YC/Stanford class about sales and marketing <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHAh6WKBgiE&t=7s\%22>eight years ago</em></a><em>.)</em></p><p><strong>Nate </strong>is the co-founder and former CEO/CTO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/lever/">Lever (S12), an all-in-one system that helps companies like Netflix and KPMG (and 5000+ others) handle everything in the talent recruiting process. Lever was acquired by Employ Inc. last year. Before starting Lever, Nate was a Product Manager on Google Search and Google Analytics, and he authored the JavaScript application framework <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://github.com/derbyjs/derby/">DerbyJS. Nate and his husband live in San Francisco with their two bernedoodles, Walnut and Brownie.</p><p>Even before today’s news, YC had more Group Partners than at any point in its history. Every addition brings more experience, more insight, and more personalized attention for each and every YC founder.<em> </em>As an increasing number of YC founders hit their grand slams, more of them are coming home to help the next generation of founders at bat and we <em>love it</em>.</p><p>Yet we’re very deliberate in who we bring on, and we’re just as deliberate in why we call them “Partners”. They’re not just partners at YC; they’re partners<em> with their YC companies</em>.<em> </em>Each of us thinks and acts like long-term owners in these companies, because <strong>that’s the right way to do this</strong>. Any insight, any experience, any strengths we can bring to help these teams succeed, we will. Anyone in startup land can offer you “mentorship”; this is so much more.</p><p>Welcome, Tyler and Nate — and congrats, Pete!</p>","comment_id":"651deaddb7f98e0001a1d5d5","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/10/Nate-Pete-Tyler.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-10-04T15:44:45.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-10-06T09:10:46.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-10-06T08:58:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"I'm thrilled to welcome YC's newest Group Partner and Visiting Group Partners. Welcome, Tyler and Nate — and congrats, Pete!","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71160","name":"Partners","slug":"partners","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/partners/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/meet-ycs-newest-group-partner-and-visiting-group-partners/","excerpt":"I'm thrilled to welcome YC's newest Group Partner and Visiting Group Partners.","reading_time":3,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":"An image of Y Combinator's Nate Smith, Pete Koomen, and Tyler Bosmeny","feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"6515c3fd47c9f1000193a1c1","uuid":"06612386-979e-4c1f-a25a-5eb175b20f37","title":"‘Backstory’ introduces you to YC’s Group Partners, starting with the unbeatable Surbhi Sarna","slug":"surbhi-sarna-backstory","html":"<p>When Surbhi Sarna was just thirteen, a sudden and excruciating pain in her side changed her life. The pain led to weeks of testing and flimsy diagnoses that would ultimately boil down to “Ovarian cancer, <em>maybe</em>?”</p><p>At this already pivotal time in her life, Surbhi and her family had to make an impossible decision: undergo a risky and potentially harmful surgery, or… wait and see. At <em><strong>thirteen!</strong></em> She chose the latter — a choice that, after many agonizing months, proved to be the right one. But that experience set Surbhi on a mission. </p><p>After finishing school and battling to find investors that didn’t write her off, she founded a medical device company focused on early stage ovarian cancer detection. In 2018, she <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://news.bostonscientific.com/2018-04-16-Boston-Scientific-Announces-Acquisition-Of-nVision-Medical-Corporation/">sold that company for $275M</a>. But she didn’t stop there.</p><p>Today Surbhi is a Group Partner at YC, mentoring the next generation of healthcare founders. Her story is one of the most intense startup stories I’ve ever heard, and it’s one best told by Surbhi herself.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-embed-card\"><iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/R2fAYn8R318?feature=oembed\%22 frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen title=\"How a Health Scare Led to a $275M Biotech Company | Backstory\"></iframe></figure><p>I’m very proud to have Surbhi kick off our newest video series, <em>Backstory</em>. Each episode of <em>Backstory</em> will focus on a different YC Group Partner; how they got here, and often just as crucially, <strong>why</strong> they’re here. For this episode, Surbhi opens up about her health scare, how it impacted her every decision thereafter, the many ways people doubted her — and how she turned that doubt into her own personal jet fuel.</p><p>We’re making this series because we want anyone applying to YC to know the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/people/">Group Partners</a> for <em>who we are</em> — not just the milestones, but also the paths in life that got us to them. <strong>Group Partners at Y Combinator are in it with you for the life of your company.</strong> We’ll bring absolutely everything we’ve learned from founding our own companies and advising thousands of others, but we’re also here for you as <em>people</em>.</p><p>Be on the lookout for more episodes soon.</p>","comment_id":"6515c3fd47c9f1000193a1c1","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/09/S09E01_SurbhiSarna.jpg","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-09-28T11:20:45.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-09-29T09:00:34.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-09-29T09:00:34.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Surbhi Sarna is a Group Partner at YC, mentoring a generation of healthcare founders. Her story is one of the most intense startup stories I’ve ever heard, but it’s one best told by Surbhi herself. In this debut episode of our new series ‘Backstory’, she’ll do just that.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71172","name":"Video","slug":"video","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/video/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71172","name":"Video","slug":"video","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/video/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/surbhi-sarna-backstory/","excerpt":"Surbhi Sarna is a Group Partner at YC, mentoring a generation of healthcare founders. Her story is one of the most intense startup stories I’ve ever heard, but it’s one best told by Surbhi herself. In this debut episode of our new series ‘Backstory’, she’ll do just that.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":"YC's Surbhi Sarna next to the text \"Underrated to Unbeatable\"","feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"64f7ffff8274c00001f752fa","uuid":"bce24121-b1d9-469f-83a5-898ccdac336e","title":"Meet the YC Summer 2023 Batch","slug":"meet-the-yc-summer-2023-batch","html":"<p>My first YC Demo Day was in Summer of 2008, where <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=S08\%22>my startup and twenty-one others</a> anxiously pitched a room full of investors on what we’d been working so hard to build.</p><p>Fifteen years later, I’m here as YC’s president kicking off our 37th Demo Day — the one celebrating the Summer 2023 batch. I’ve seen a lot of batches in the last decade and a half, and I can say without a doubt: this is a good one. It’s one of the strongest YC batches ever; the technical talent runs<em> deep</em>.</p><p>We received over 24,000 applications for this batch; we funded 229. We deliberately went with very early startups for this batch. 75% of the companies presenting today started with no revenue on day one of YC. 81% had never raised a dime.</p><p>This is the first batch in over three years that took place 100% in person. Office hours, speaker sessions, meetups — we were able to be together for all of it. <strong>For the next batch, I’m happy to share that we’re also making plans for an in-person, invite-only Demo Day. </strong>Virtual Demo Day served us well for the last few years and we’re planning to continue offering a way to watch it remotely… but there truly is no room like the one that YC can bring together for Demo Day. Want to be there? Invest in YC companies.</p><p>You’ll notice AI has a <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=S23&query=AI\%22>big presence in the S23 class</a> — this is no accident. Recent developments in AI have unlocked an <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1689872015535300608/">entire universe of possibilities</a>, presenting a resoundingly clear answer to the question of “<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/Jt-garry-s-channel-why-now-the-key-to-million-dollar-startup-ideas/">Why now?</a>”. There has never been a better time to start an AI company than now, and there is no better place to start an AI company than Y Combinator.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/09/YC-banner.png/" class=\"kg-image\" alt loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1157\" height=\"660\" srcset=\"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/size/w600/2023/09/YC-banner.png 600w, https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/size/w1000/2023/09/YC-banner.png 1000w, https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/09/YC-banner.png 1157w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 720px) 720px\"></figure><p>This batch brings the YC community to over 10,000 founders across more than 4,500 startups. 350+ of those startups are valued at more than $150 million; 90+ of them are valued at more than $1 billion. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1697023604683309530/">Over 5% of YC companies become unicorns</a>, a percentage that<em> still </em>blows my mind to write. It’s unrivaled.</p><p>YC now has more full-time Group Partners than it ever has before, allowing us to give more personalized attention to those founders and their startups. YC’s Group Partners are the ones that pick the companies, work with them throughout the batch, and support the founders for the life of their company. The <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/tom-blomfield-of-gocardless-and-monzo-is-our-newest-group-partner/">newest Group Partner is Tom Blomfield</a>, co-founder of two billion-dollar startups: GoCardless and Monzo. We also <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/welcome-back-to-yc-emmett-shear-and-wayne-crosby/">recently welcomed back </a>YC alum Wayne Crosby (co-founder of Zenter, the startup that became Google Slides) and Emmett Shear (co-founder of Twitch) as Visiting Group Partners.</p><p>For years we’ve shared what verticals each respective batch focused on. <strong>For S23, it breaks down like this:</strong></p><ul><li>70% in B2B SaaS / Enterprise</li><li>10% in Fintech</li><li>10% in Healthcare</li><li>6% in Consumer</li><li>4% Proptech / Industrials</li></ul><p><strong>The demographics* for the S23 batch:</strong></p><ul><li>16% Asian</li><li>2% Black</li><li>3% Hispanic or Latino</li><li>3% Middle Eastern or North African</li><li>6% Multiracial</li><li>12% South Asian</li><li>29% White</li></ul><p><em>(* self-reported and opt-in; not all founders reported demographics)</em></p><p>Additionally, 15% of the S23 companies have a woman founder and 10% of the founders are women.</p><p><strong>If you’re investing in YC companies, three things I ask of you:</strong></p><ol><li><strong>Do no harm</strong> — This should be a simple one, but as with anything having to do with investing, it gets complicated. If you don’t have capital to invest, if the startup is clearly out-of-thesis, or if there’s a clear conflict (such as having invested in a competitor when you don’t invest in competing companies), you shouldn’t meet with them. If you might be able to invest or help but not until later, call that out up front so founders can properly prioritize. <br></li><li><strong>Make decisions quickly</strong> — Speaking from experience, I know how hard it is as an investor to talk to dozens of startups in quick succession. But this is their life, and no matter how busy you get, we ask you to treat each founder with respect and seriousness. The wrong way to do YC Demo Day is to wait until a deal gets hot. We want you to be a conviction investor: make your own call, do your own research, and get to know the founders and their spaces. If it all resonates with you, invest. <br><br><em>(We recommend using the handshake deal protocol so you and the founders can choose to work together in a quick and clean way. If you haven’t seen that, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/handshake/">here it is</a>.)</em><br></li><li><strong>Act like long-term owners and </strong><em><strong>be helpful</strong></em> — If you’re investing, introduce the founders to more investors. Introduce them to potential customers. YC is a community. The founders tell each other who’s most helpful, and who can help bake that 10-year “overnight” success. If you’re looking for a quick flip, this is the wrong business for you to be in. <br></li></ol><p>I am so excited for this new set of founders joining the YC community. We’re thankful to our YC investor community and are excited that with the founders, we’ll be looking to create the next generation of world-changing startups.<br><br>Do you want to be a part of the next batch of YC? <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/">Apply here</strong></a>.</p>","comment_id":"64f7ffff8274c00001f752fa","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/09/S23.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-09-05T21:28:47.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-09-06T09:00:00.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-09-06T09:00:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"We're kicking off our 37th Demo Day — the one celebrating the Summer 2023 batch. I’ve seen a lot of batches in the last decade and a half, and I can say without a doubt: this is a good one. It’s one of the strongest YC batches ever.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117a","name":"Batch Stats","slug":"batch-stats","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/batch-stats/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/meet-the-yc-summer-2023-batch/","excerpt":"We're kicking off our 37th Demo Day — the one celebrating the Summer 2023 batch. I’ve seen a lot of batches in the last decade and a half, and I can say without a doubt: this is a good one. It’s one of the strongest YC batches ever.","reading_time":4,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":"A collage of photos in front of the text \"Meet the YC Summer 2023 Batch\"","feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"64ddd64dbf4b990001b7f938","uuid":"e4c249e8-bc67-4008-b6f1-a70fb68d07a0","title":"YC’s Group Partners share their worst investor meetings","slug":"ycs-group-partners-share-their-worst-investor-meetings","html":"<p>Mind games. Awkward power moves. Investors showing up hours late, only to make no effort to seem interested. </p><p>Before any of us were Group Partners at YC, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/people/">we were founders</a>. We know how it feels to be in the hot seat when you’re raising money, and we’ve seen just how many ways an investor meeting can go wrong. </p><p>For this latest episode of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/introducing-our-newest-video-series-office-hours//">Office Hours</strong></a>, the Group Partners are sharing stories from their worst investor meetings. We’ll outline some of the weird plays we’ve seen investors try to pull — but we’ll also confess times that we, as founders, bungled meetings we could’ve nailed. We’ll discuss what differentiates a truly great investor, and shed a bit of light on something we rarely talk about publicly: the YC Investor Database. </p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-embed-card\"><iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/ljVan7CGBiE?feature=oembed\%22 frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen title=\"Startup Experts Share Their Investor Horror Stories\"></iframe></figure><p>Why share these stories? Because if you’re prepared for the worst, you’ll be better off when it’s your turn. We’re at the beginning of a shift in the way business is done, and the kinds of games VCs played in these stories just aren’t going to work anymore. </p><p>At the end of the day, just remember: the point of your startup is not to raise money, impress investors, or gain status. The point is to create something that actually solves a real problem. We’re here to <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html/">make something people want</a>.</p><p>This is the second episode of <strong>Office Hours</strong>.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/introducing-our-newest-video-series-office-hours//"> Find the first episode here</a>.</p>","comment_id":"64ddd64dbf4b990001b7f938","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/08/maxresdefault.jpg","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-08-17T01:11:57.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-08-17T09:16:54.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-08-17T09:14:16.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Before any of us were Group Partners at YC, we were founders. We know how it feels to be in the hot seat when you’re raising money, and we’ve seen just how many ways an investor meeting can go wrong. \n\nFor the latest episode of Office Hours, we tell some of those stories.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71172","name":"Video","slug":"video","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/video/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71172","name":"Video","slug":"video","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/video/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/ycs-group-partners-share-their-worst-investor-meetings/","excerpt":"Before any of us were Group Partners at YC, we were founders. We know how it feels to be in the hot seat when you’re raising money, and we’ve seen just how many ways an investor meeting can go wrong. For the latest episode of Office Hours, we tell some of those stories.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"64b847eef63b700001fe8526","uuid":"6a136ace-31a7-4b43-b5aa-b4f70c554e7d","title":"Introducing our newest video series: Office Hours","slug":"introducing-our-newest-video-series-office-hours","html":"<p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/brex/">Brex’s co-founders originally wanted to build a VR headset. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/goat-group/">GOAT’s co-founders set out to build an app for meeting new people over dinner. Instagram was a Foursquare competitor. Slack was a game. YouTube wanted to be a dating site. </p><p>It turns out many of the billion dollar companies you know and love today pivoted on the way to getting there, and that’s what the first episode of our newest video series <strong>Office Hours</strong> is about.</p><p>How do you know if it’s time for your startup to pivot? How can you narrow down which idea to try next — and how will you know if that next idea is the one?</p><p>In <strong>Office Hours</strong>, we’ll feature Y Combinator’s <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/people/">Group Partners</a> discussing the startup topics that they know better than just about anyone else in the world, because they’ve built their own successful startups and have advised thousands more. What other set of people in the world has seen zero-to-one success so many times? There is no parallel.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-embed-card\"><iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/DmehFuCMtvc?feature=oembed\%22 frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen title=\"Startup Experts Reveal Their Favorite Pivot Stories\"></iframe></figure><p>Pivots are frequently misunderstood. You might think that pivoting is something done only by the startups that don’t make it; in reality, a huge number of the best startups pivoted. The first steps on your startup journey might not be in the best direction, but they’re getting you that much closer to the path you’re looking for.</p><p>This is just the first co-production by YC's video team (Zach Both and Ryan Loughlin) and Garry Tan, president of YC, in deep collaboration with all dozen of YC’s deeply experienced group partners. Be on the lookout for the next episode of Office Hours in just a few weeks.</p>","comment_id":"64b847eef63b700001fe8526","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/07/office-hours-featured.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-07-19T13:30:38.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-07-21T10:57:02.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-07-21T10:34:33.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Many of the billion dollar startups you know and love had to pivot, and that’s what the first episode of our newest video series Office Hours is about. ","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},{"id":"645000ebb09be6000165fbad","name":"Greg Kumparak","slug":"greg","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/05/greg.jpeg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Greg oversees editorial content at Y Combinator. He was previously an editor at TechCrunch for nearly 15 years.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/greg/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71172","name":"Video","slug":"video","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/video/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a711b8","name":"#1556","slug":"hash-1556","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"},{"id":"64bab4222f303f00013abd53","name":"#168","slug":"hash-168","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"},{"id":"64bab5032f303f00013abd59","name":"Office Hours","slug":"office-hours","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/office-hours/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. 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Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71172","name":"Video","slug":"video","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/video/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/introducing-our-newest-video-series-office-hours/","excerpt":"Many of the billion dollar startups you know and love had to pivot, and that’s what the first episode of our newest video series Office Hours is about.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":"A promo image for Office Hours featuring three YC group partners","feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"6499da4340f4a80001a449a3","uuid":"9b507206-3228-4801-bb17-98a585114cf8","title":"Inaugural YC Top Companies List by Revenue","slug":"yc-top-companies-list-by-revenue","html":"<p>A startup is designed to grow fast, and the best metric to gauge that growth is <strong>revenue</strong>. After all, you make what you measure. And in today's uncertain economic climate, when prudence around fundraising and valuations make sense, it’s especially worth shining a light on<strong> </strong>revenue as the clearest signal of a startup’s success. </p><p>Today we’re publishing a list that recognizes the companies in the YC community that achieved the highest net revenue throughout 2022, presented in alphabetical order. Congratulations to everyone on the inaugural <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/revenue/">YC Top Companies List by Revenue</a>!</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/06/Top-Revenue-FINAL.gif/" class=\"kg-image\" alt=\"A scrolling preview of the YC Top Companies List by Revenue\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1384\"></figure><p>Why publish this list? Because as we put it together for our own use, we were amazed by its variety. For aspiring founders, we hope these companies — representing many verticals, locations, and stages of growth — inspire you to pursue your vision. Despite the fiscal landscape, now is a <strong>great</strong> time to start a startup — and as this list shows, tremendous startups can come in many, many forms. </p><p>As revenue is confidential for most of these companies, we’re not exposing the specific revenue amounts — likewise, companies are listed in alphabetical order. The companies featured have all generated above a certain threshold of net revenue in 2022 and submitted audited financials reflecting 2022 full year net revenue (not GMV, sales, or ARR).<sup>1</sup></p><p><strong>Here are stats about the companies on the list:</strong></p><ul><li>The total revenue generated by these companies in 2022 is more than $50B</li><li>The companies have collectively raised $40B; they are collectively valued at $400B</li><li>Each company on the list is valued at more than $150M</li><li>15 companies (30%) have had an exit, with 12 of those being publicly traded</li><li>Together, these 50 companies employ over 70k people</li><li>74% have remote working options for employees</li><li>70% have an office in the Bay Area</li><li>22% have an office outside of the United States</li><li>The vast majority of these companies were founded by 2 (55%) or 3 (32%) co-founders</li><li>The three companies on the list that most recently went through YC are <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/whatnot/">Whatnot (W20), <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/deel/">Deel (W19), and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nowports/">Nowports (W19)</li><li>The S12 batch appears most frequently on the list with Benchling, Coinbase, Instacart, SmartAsset, and Zapier</li><li>The W12, W14, and W15 batches appear second most frequently on the list with four companies each</li></ul><!--kg-card-begin: markdown--><ul>\n<li>6 sectors are represented, including:\n<ul>\n<li>B2B software and services (50%)</li>\n<li>Consumer (22%)</li>\n<li>Financial technology and services (18%)</li>\n<li>Healthcare (6%)</li>\n<li>Industrials (2%)</li>\n<li>Real estate and construction (2%)</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<!--kg-card-end: markdown--><hr><p><em><sup><strong>1 </strong>For companies that were acquired, we collected revenue associated only with the legacy business that Y Combinator originally funded. Only companies that have maintained their standalone P&Ls were considered for the list. We have not performed any calculations to estimate revenue that should be allocated to the acquired startups.</sup></em></p>","comment_id":"6499da4340f4a80001a449a3","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/06/Top-Companies-Banner.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-06-26T11:34:43.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-06-27T10:38:02.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-06-27T05:00:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Today we’re publishing a list that recognizes the companies in the YC community that achieved the highest net revenue throughout 2022. 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Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. 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If you’ve been in there at all, you know how hard it is to even<em> find</em> product-market fit, let alone keep it.</p><p>I’m proud to say our newest group partner is Tom Blomfield, who has been there not once but <strong>twice,</strong> and twice emerged with a billion-dollar company.</p><p>I first met Tom in 2011 when he went through YC with <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gocardless/">GoCardless, an online payments processor for the Direct Debit system and Tom’s first billion-dollar company. I was a YC partner at the time, and office hours with Tom quickly proved that he was an extremely smart, direct, yet empathetic founder. </p><p>In 2015, Tom went on to create <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/monzo-bank/">Monzo, one of the first app-based challenger banks in the UK and his second billion-dollar company. In 2021, he <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/welcome-surbhi-nicolas-divya-ashu-and-tom/">returned to YC as a visiting group partner for the most recent three batches. </p><p>When it comes to group partners, we look for the most experienced founders to mentor startups throughout the batch. While most people spend their career building up that experience in one area, Tom has domain expertise in multiple — B2B software with GoCardless, and consumer/viral marketing with Monzo. He has a unique set of skills as someone who led as both a technical co-founder (at GoCardless) and CEO (at Monzo), and the rare experience of scaling not one, but two, massively successful companies. </p><p>Today, the YC community is made up of more than 90 billion-dollar companies and that number is always growing. Tom leverages his experience to advise alumni at every stage of their startup – whether it’s just figuring out if an idea works, putting a board together, growing a team to thousands of employees, running multiple offices, or later-stage fundraising. There’s not a startup that he can’t give useful advice to, always drawn from his own experience. </p><p>The traits I saw in Tom as a founder in 2011 have proven to be extremely beneficial as a group partner. He’s direct with founders while having empathy for the difficulties of being one. He helps founders see that the smallest ideas can lead to world-changing companies, and he provides them with the optimism needed at the lowest points in the founder journey. </p><p>We now have the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/people/">largest number of group partners</a> in YC history. We’re increasingly finding that our best alumni are coming back to be group partners to shepherd in the next generation. Tom is no exception. His experience has already proven invaluable to the YC community, and we’re so thrilled he has joined as a group partner!</p>","comment_id":"646cef8dbd93340001aed321","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/05/Tom-Blomfield-YC.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-05-23T09:53:33.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-07-21T10:37:16.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-05-24T09:00:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Introducing YC's newest Group Partner, Tom Blomfield","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71160","name":"Partners","slug":"partners","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/partners/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71160","name":"Partners","slug":"partners","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/partners/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tom-blomfield-of-gocardless-and-monzo-is-our-newest-group-partner/","excerpt":"Introducing YC's newest Group Partner, Tom Blomfield","reading_time":2,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":"A photo of Tom Blomfield, the newest Group Partner at Y Combinator","feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"641a393150615b000151d84b","uuid":"c024d53d-8c70-4b05-9d7a-879111b8b495","title":"Building APIs for AI: An Interview with Zapier’s Bryan Helmig","slug":"building-apis-for-ai-an-interview-with-zapiers-bryan-helmig","html":"<p>Nearly ten years ago I wrote about the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.garrytan.com/the-api-ization-of-everything/">API-ization of everything</a>. It seemed obvious then that software that talks to other software would be critical for building world-changing startups. What was less obvious then and more obvious now, is that those APIs would need to be connected to harness the full potential of everyday apps.</p><p>One of the best companies at connecting APIs is Zapier, which went through the YC Summer 2012 batch. Zapier, the leader in easy automation, makes it simple to automate workflows and move data across 5000+ apps. Setup takes less than six minutes and there’s not a single line of code. And with over 5,000 of the most popular B2B and consumer apps integrated, they’re already powering over 10 million integration possibilities.</p><p>I got a chance to sit down with Bryan Helmig (@<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/bryanhelmig?lang=en\%22>bryanhelmig), the CTO and founder of Zapier, to talk APIs, interoperability, and learn more about the company’s first-ever public API: Natural Language Actions (NLA). With this new API, they’re making it possible to plug integrations directly into your product, and it's optimized for LLMs. </p><hr><p><strong>Bryan, thanks for joining me and finding time to catch up. Given the launch of your new Natural Language (NLA) API, I’m sure there was some insight or trend you were seeing that guided your build. </strong></p><p>Bryan: Absolutely. AI apps have become the fastest-growing category of apps on Zapier’s platform… ever. We're seeing a huge demand from our users and partner ecosystem, to plug AI and large language models into their existing tools, workflows and automation. And Zapier is well positioned to help – 81 billion workflow tasks have already been created on our platform. </p><p>We actually started by prototyping LLM products into our own tech stack. We had two previous product experiments before NLA. The first was a fully chat-based Zap setup flow. With current-generation models, this often felt like playing \"20 questions\" with the model – not a great user experience. But it made us realize that other developers were likely facing the same challenges, and that Zapier could really deliver a seamless and simple developer experience in a way that no other company could. </p><p>From there, we focused on how to wrap up and simplify each individual API endpoint you might find across Zapier's 20k+ actions. We then allowed the model to call each one as a separate “tool”. That was the fundamental design principle we used internally, and it helped us to expose this as the new NLA API – for any developer to add integrations into that products or internal tools in 5-10 minutes. </p><p><strong>For a team that’s the expert in APIs, launching Zapier’s first public API is a big deal. What about LLMs made this project different from how you’ve previously approached APIs in the past?</strong></p><p>Prior to LLMs, we never felt like we could deliver the magical developer experience that we wanted to. Under the hood, Zapier wraps up a ton of complexity from our ecosystem – our platform handles around 20 types of API auths, custom fields, versioning and migrations, arbitrary payload sizes, binary data. You name it. Making a Zapier API would have meant passing along all that complexity to our end users. </p><p>But now, AI and LLMs bring an interesting inflection point for Zapier: The new Natural Language Actions API abstracts all that complexity away from devs. In fact, the API has only one required parameter: \"instructions\". NLA can also be used in the more \"classic\" way by calling it hard-coded parameters instead of natural language parsing, but the natural language capabilities make it especially useful for people building products<em> on top</em> of LLMs. Ultimately we are using LLMs to make APIs easier to use for both humans and other LLMs!</p><p><strong>And what are some of the exciting things you’re seeing people build with your APIs?</strong></p><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://zapier.com/blog/how-a-contractor-uses-ai-to-write-business-emails//">There's this amazing story</a> about a contractor with dyslexia who teamed up with a client of his who happened to be familiar with Zapier. They built a Zap with OpenAI’s GPT-3 to write better business emails. It totally transformed his communication and even helped him land a massive $200,000 contract! It’s those stories of AI and automation coming together to help individual people that makes me excited to be building on this technology today.</p><p>But, really, we’re just scratching the surface. We can’t predict what all the builders on our Zapier platform will create. I mean, when we launched multi-step Zaps 5 years ago, we set a \"sanity\" limit of 30 [workflow] steps. We thought that would clearly be enough for anybody. But in less than 24 hours, users were inundating us to raise the limit. And as we dug in deeper, and found these beautiful, mind-blowing and complex Zaps – things we couldn’t have ever imagined. With LLMs in the mix, we’re hoping we’ll enable that same level of creativity and power, and now from the developer community. </p><p><strong>So with all of the power that LLMs bring to the table, can you share what’s actually happening under the hood? How have you kept it simple? </strong></p><p>At its core, we leverage OpenAI’s GPT3.5 series to understand and process natural language instructions from the user, map it to a specific API call, and return the response from the API – all in a way that’s optimized for LLMs.</p><p>First, users give explicit permission to the model to access certain actions. We try to make this super fast and simple, to feel like an OAuth flow to the end user. When a user is setting this up, they’re able to see what the required fields are and either let the AI guess or manually specify the values. Then once in a developer’s platform, the only required field for the user is the natural language instruction. We take that instruction from a user and let the model figure out how to fill in the required fields. The model then constructs an API call. </p><p>Before we can send the results back, we also need to make it LLM and human-readable. Many APIs return really complex data in their API responses that would not only cause an LLM to go over its token limit but it confuses both the model and the user. (As an example, a Gmail API call returns over 10,000 tokens!). We've done work on our end to trim down the results to expose just the relevant pieces. The NLA API currently guarantees arbitrary API payloads will fit into 350 tokens or fewer. This makes it incredibly easy to use and build on the NLA API without worrying about the data input or output with the APIs.</p><p><strong>And for any aspiring API developer reading this – either looking to use your new APIs or even building their own – any tips from the guys who live and breathe APIs all day?</strong></p><p>Definitely. The big thing many APIs \"get wrong\" is being overly complex, overly unique, and overly hard to get started. You’ve talked about how Stripe and Lob have gotten payments and shipping right by simplifying complexity; we leaned on similar examples for inspiration. If you’re building an API, you should too.</p><p>We're definitely big fans of libraries like <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://django-ninja.rest-framework.com//">django-ninja or <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://fastapi.tiangolo.com//">FastAPI for creating compelling APIs with baked-in types and documentation. We're using that sort of technology under the hood as well, both for design consistency and for scalability. </p><p>In the development of our NLA, we've tried to be strict about not letting internal complexity filter down to end developers. NLA supports both OAuth and API keys for quickly getting started, and we have several off-the-shelf examples in the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://nla.zapier.com/api/v1/dynamic/docs/">API documentation</a>, including a published <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.langchain.dev/langchain-zapier-nla//">LangChain integration</a>.</p><p>If you want to get started, any developer can <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://nla.zapier.com/get-started//">create an API key right away</a>. We’re excited to see what you can imagine, and please share – tag me on Twitter (<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/bryanhelmig?lang=en\%22>@bryanhelmig) and show me what you’ve got. And even better, I’d love feedback on what we’ve built, and we’re here to answer questions. And if you’re an API geek like the rest of us at Zapier… <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://zapier.com/jobs/">we’re hiring</a>.</p>","comment_id":"641a393150615b000151d84b","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/og-NLA_tm3lap.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-03-21T16:09:37.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-03-22T08:59:00.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-03-22T08:59:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"We sat down with Bryan Helmig, the CTO and founder of Zapier, to talk APIs and interoperability, and learn more about the company’s first-ever public API: Natural Language Actions (NLA).","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"}],"tags":[{"id":"62b9edfe063d2d0001f0fc58","name":"#442","slug":"hash-442","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71196","name":"Technical","slug":"technical","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/technical/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71175","name":"Interview","slug":"interview","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/interview/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},"primary_tag":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/building-apis-for-ai-an-interview-with-zapiers-bryan-helmig/","excerpt":"We sat down with Bryan Helmig, the CTO and founder of Zapier, to talk APIs and interoperability, and learn more about the company’s first-ever public API: Natural Language Actions (NLA).","reading_time":5,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"640f88ee8cd9c60001e58302","uuid":"72313612-7376-404d-9a29-d9292d8b6785","title":"Changes at YC","slug":"changes-at-yc","html":"<p>YC is known primarily as a place where very early founders create something from nothing by simply applying online and joining the world’s best founder community. When they do, a shocking percentage of them will go on to make a startup worth a billion dollars (on average 6 out of 100 startups in recent batches).<br><br>YC is rightly known for early stage investing. In recent years, we have also done some late stage investing. But late stage investing turned out to be so different from early stage that we found it to be a distraction from our core mission. So we’re going to decrease the amount of late stage investing we do.<br><br>Unfortunately, this means we will no longer need some of the roles on the late stage investing team. Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today. As we make this change in strategy, we want to acknowledge and express our appreciation for their substantial contributions.<br><br>There shouldn’t be any noticeable effect on the companies we’ve funded or on the way we interact with alumni, but if any companies or alumni have questions, I’m here and the YC group partners are here — as always, to help you make something people want.</p>","comment_id":"640f88ee8cd9c60001e58302","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/changes.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-03-13T13:34:54.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-03-16T09:45:18.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-03-13T13:42:06.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"In recent years, we have also done some late stage investing. But late stage investing turned out to be so different from early stage that we found it to be a distraction from our core mission. So we’re going to decrease the amount of late stage investing we do.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710d2","name":"Garry Tan","slug":"garry","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/03/Instagram-Image-Template--Square---21-.png","cover_image":null,"bio":"Garry is the President & CEO of Y Combinator. Previously, he was the co-founder & Managing Partner of Initialized Capital. Before that, he co-founded Posterous (YC S08) which was acquired by Twitter.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":"@garrytan","meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/garry/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/changes-at-yc/","excerpt":"In recent years, we have also done some late stage investing. But late stage investing turned out to be so different from early stage that we found it to be a distraction from our core mission. So we’re going to decrease the amount of late stage investing we do.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null}],"filter":"By Garry Tan","featured":null,"pagination":{"page":1,"limit":10,"pages":1,"total":9,"next":null,"prev":null}},"url":"/blog/author/garry","version":null,"rails_context":{"railsEnv":"production","inMailer":false,"i18nLocale":"en","i18nDefaultLocale":"en","href":"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/author/garry","location":"/blog/author/garry","scheme":"https","host":"www.ycombinator.com","port":null,"pathname":"/blog/author/garry","search":null,"httpAcceptLanguage":"en, *","applyBatchLong":"Winter 2024","applyBatchShort":"W2024","applyDeadlineShort":"October 13","ycdcRetroMode":true,"currentUser":null,"serverSide":true},"id":"ycdc_new/pages/BlogList-react-component-f9f5fae1-06a8-40b2-af7a-c51202a7680f","server_side":true}" data-reactroot="">Recent Posts By Garry Tan
All Posts
YC’s Group Partners share their worst investor meetings
by Garry Tan8/17/2023
Before any of us were Group Partners at YC, we were founders. We know how it feels to be in the hot seat when you’re raising money, and we’ve seen just how many ways an investor meeting can go wrong. For the latest episode of Office Hours, we tell some of those stories.
Introducing our newest video series: Office Hours
by Garry Tan, Greg Kumparak7/21/2023
Many of the billion dollar startups you know and love had to pivot, and that’s what the first episode of our newest video series Office Hours is about.
Inaugural YC Top Companies List by Revenue
by Garry Tan6/27/2023
Today we’re publishing a list that recognizes the companies in the YC community that achieved the highest net revenue throughout 2022. Congratulations to everyone on the inaugural YC Top Companies List by Revenue!
Tom Blomfield of GoCardless and Monzo is our newest Group Partner
by Garry Tan5/24/2023
Introducing YC's newest Group Partner, Tom Blomfield
Building APIs for AI: An Interview with Zapier’s Bryan Helmig
by Garry Tan3/22/2023
We sat down with Bryan Helmig, the CTO and founder of Zapier, to talk APIs and interoperability, and learn more about the company’s first-ever public API: Natural Language Actions (NLA).
Changes at YC
by Garry Tan3/13/2023
In recent years, we have also done some late stage investing. But late stage investing turned out to be so different from early stage that we found it to be a distraction from our core mission. So we’re going to decrease the amount of late stage investing we do.